By and large, it seems like the BADSITES-equivalent proposals are "mostly dead"-- I think everyone recognizes that "Never link to any 'site that is sufficently bad', deletion exempt from 3RR" has been rejected by the community. (Rejected in the formal sense-- it's hotly disputed, doesn't have consensus, and that isn't likely to change anytime soon).
Such proposals may be mostly dead, but of course: "MOSTLY dead" isn't "all dead". I see there's at least one BADSITES-equivalent proposal still floating around here on the list, namely the proposal that says "Any site that is sufficiently bad shall be declared unreliable, and may not be linked to". And, like any perinneal debate, I'm sure there will be more such proposals for the foreseeable future.
Therefore, I'd propose the following question to anyone proposing new policies on this subject:
How would your policy prevent incidents like MakingLights and the MichaelMoore from happening again in the future?
---------------- DISCLAIMER:
Just to remind us all, I'll recap the Making Lights saga, but I won't name the person who was involved, and I sincerely would ask everyone else not to criticize someone today for something they did months ago. Seriously. We've all made mistakes, they're over and done with, and I _sincerely_ am not trying to relive this past saga-- I just don't want to relive it in the future either.
Ordinarily, I'd use a hypothetical example here, but I've found that in this debate, hypothetical examples are invariably dismissed when someone says "Oh, that could never really happen". So I actually do have to use a real-world example if we're going to talk about this.
----
The Making Light Story
MakingLights is a famous blog, run by a famous person. People on that site's forum got into a flamewar of some sort with somebody. Some very-not-nice things were said, and apparently some personal information was posted. (Ostensibly the person's real name could be found just by typing his username into google, but I haven't confirmed that).
Unfortunately for MakingLights, the person who was flamed turned out to be a Wikipedia administrator. He came to Wikipedia, declared Making Lights an "attack site", and in less than two hours, he went to 23 different pages and deleted all the links to Making Lights and its affiliated sites. When members of the community objected to the deletions and restored the links, the same admin performed 22 seperate reverts in under two hours.
When questioned, the admin justified his actions by arguing, in part, that the site's alleged harassment of him "calls the website's neutrality into question. If the editor [of Making Lights] is engaged in ongoing disputes with Wikipedia and its editors, can it still be viewed as a reliable source?" The admin also offered a quid pro quo, whereby if the objectionable content was removed from Making Lights, the Wikipedia links to ML would be restored, but if the content remained on Making Lights, he promised to continue to remove the links to ML indefinitely.
The whole experience was extremely upsetting for all involved, and if you look around on Sci-Fi community blogs, you can see that Wikipedia lost a lot of respect in that incident. Many in that sci-fi-blogger subculture seem to have some harsh words for Wikipedia as a result of the experience, and I'm sure we alienated a lot of people who could have been valuable contributors. The people who edit and read Making Lights felt bullied, abused, and harassed.
Speaking as a reader/editors of Making Light, Sci Fi megagenius Cory Doctorow summarized the experience thusly:
"This is unseemly. You appear to be attempting to punish someone who dislikes you by removing references to her site. This seems like retaliation, not an effort to improve Wikipedia. What's more, the repeated demand to change something posted to her site seems like extortion, not an attempt to improve Wikipedia. TNH claims that Wikipedians pursue petty vendettas at the expense of quality. Please conduct yourself in a way that does not lend itself to this interpretation of the project."
Ultimatlely, that particular incident came to an end when the disputed material was deleted from ML, at least temporarily, and the links to ML were restored. ------------------------------
Now, let's not obsess over WHO did this. I swear, I'm not bring this up to get in a dig at anyone. The admin in question admits at least having "overreacted", and as long as the behavior has stopped, it doesn't matter WHO did this-- so by bringing this up, I'm sincerely, sincerely not trying to pick on anyone. We've all done things in the past, on wikipedia or elsewhere, that we shouldn't be throwing stones over this past thing right now. ----
But that said, I can't help but notice that this sort of abuse seems inherent to any BADSITESesque polices of the form "no linking to sites that are sufficiently bad".
My questions for Will Beback, or anyone else in the future who proposes a new policy that forbids all links to "sites that contain attacks" are this:
#1. Do you agree that the Making Light case was an abuse of power (or at least, incorrect. .-- i.e. Do you agree Making lights should NOT have been purged)?
#2. And if so, how will your new proposed policy prevent this sort of abuse when the old policy was unable to. That is-- if we all magically decided to enact your policy today, what's to stop you (or me, or anyone) from turning around tomorrow and having a complete repeat of this whole fiasco tomorrow.
---
I believe any future policy, in order to be successful, must recognize the past abuses of BADSITES, and must include reasonsable assurances that the proposed policy won't lead to the same kind of abuses in the future.
If an anthropomophic proposal's answer is "MakingLights and MichaelMoore should have been deleted, and if I get enacted, I will make sure they get deleted again if a similar situation arises", then I personally think such a proposal is unlikely to ever achieve consensus. ---
Alec
On 10/18/07, Alec Conroy alecmconroy@gmail.com wrote:
By and large, it seems like the BADSITES-equivalent proposals are "mostly dead"-- I think everyone recognizes that "Never link to any 'site that is sufficently bad', deletion exempt from 3RR" has been rejected by the community. (Rejected in the formal sense-- it's hotly disputed, doesn't have consensus, and that isn't likely to change anytime soon).
Such proposals may be mostly dead, but of course: "MOSTLY dead" isn't "all dead". I see there's at least one BADSITES-equivalent proposal still floating around here on the list, namely the proposal that says "Any site that is sufficiently bad shall be declared unreliable, and may not be linked to". And, like any perinneal debate, I'm sure there will be more such proposals for the foreseeable future.
Therefore, I'd propose the following question to anyone proposing new policies on this subject:
How would your policy prevent incidents like MakingLights and the MichaelMoore from happening again in the future?
DISCLAIMER:
Just to remind us all, I'll recap the Making Lights saga, but I won't name the person who was involved, and I sincerely would ask everyone else not to criticize someone today for something they did months ago. Seriously. We've all made mistakes, they're over and done with, and I _sincerely_ am not trying to relive this past saga-- I just don't want to relive it in the future either.
Ordinarily, I'd use a hypothetical example here, but I've found that in this debate, hypothetical examples are invariably dismissed when someone says "Oh, that could never really happen". So I actually do have to use a real-world example if we're going to talk about this.
The Making Light Story
MakingLights is a famous blog, run by a famous person. People on that site's forum got into a flamewar of some sort with somebody. Some very-not-nice things were said, and apparently some personal information was posted. (Ostensibly the person's real name could be found just by typing his username into google, but I haven't confirmed that).
Unfortunately for MakingLights, the person who was flamed turned out to be a Wikipedia administrator. He came to Wikipedia, declared Making Lights an "attack site", and in less than two hours, he went to 23 different pages and deleted all the links to Making Lights and its affiliated sites. When members of the community objected to the deletions and restored the links, the same admin performed 22 seperate reverts in under two hours.
When questioned, the admin justified his actions by arguing, in part, that the site's alleged harassment of him "calls the website's neutrality into question. If the editor [of Making Lights] is engaged in ongoing disputes with Wikipedia and its editors, can it still be viewed as a reliable source?" The admin also offered a quid pro quo, whereby if the objectionable content was removed from Making Lights, the Wikipedia links to ML would be restored, but if the content remained on Making Lights, he promised to continue to remove the links to ML indefinitely.
The whole experience was extremely upsetting for all involved, and if you look around on Sci-Fi community blogs, you can see that Wikipedia lost a lot of respect in that incident. Many in that sci-fi-blogger subculture seem to have some harsh words for Wikipedia as a result of the experience, and I'm sure we alienated a lot of people who could have been valuable contributors. The people who edit and read Making Lights felt bullied, abused, and harassed.
Speaking as a reader/editors of Making Light, Sci Fi megagenius Cory Doctorow summarized the experience thusly:
"This is unseemly. You appear to be attempting to punish someone who dislikes you by removing references to her site. This seems like retaliation, not an effort to improve Wikipedia. What's more, the repeated demand to change something posted to her site seems like extortion, not an attempt to improve Wikipedia. TNH claims that Wikipedians pursue petty vendettas at the expense of quality. Please conduct yourself in a way that does not lend itself to this interpretation of the project."
Ultimatlely, that particular incident came to an end when the disputed material was deleted from ML, at least temporarily, and the links to ML were restored.
Now, let's not obsess over WHO did this. I swear, I'm not bring this up to get in a dig at anyone. The admin in question admits at least having "overreacted", and as long as the behavior has stopped, it doesn't matter WHO did this-- so by bringing this up, I'm sincerely, sincerely not trying to pick on anyone. We've all done things in the past, on wikipedia or elsewhere, that we shouldn't be throwing stones over this past thing right now.
But that said, I can't help but notice that this sort of abuse seems inherent to any BADSITESesque polices of the form "no linking to sites that are sufficiently bad".
My questions for Will Beback, or anyone else in the future who proposes a new policy that forbids all links to "sites that contain attacks" are this:
#1. Do you agree that the Making Light case was an abuse of power (or at least, incorrect. .-- i.e. Do you agree Making lights should NOT have been purged)?
#2. And if so, how will your new proposed policy prevent this sort of abuse when the old policy was unable to. That is-- if we all magically decided to enact your policy today, what's to stop you (or me, or anyone) from turning around tomorrow and having a complete repeat of this whole fiasco tomorrow.
I believe any future policy, in order to be successful, must recognize the past abuses of BADSITES, and must include reasonsable assurances that the proposed policy won't lead to the same kind of abuses in the future.
If an anthropomophic proposal's answer is "MakingLights and MichaelMoore should have been deleted, and if I get enacted, I will make sure they get deleted again if a similar situation arises", then I personally think such a proposal is unlikely to ever achieve consensus.
Alec
What was up with Michael Moore's site being an attack site? I somehow missed that episode... ~~~~
On 10/18/07, Alec Conroy alecmconroy@gmail.com wrote:
MakingLights is a famous blog, run by a famous person. People on that site's forum got into a flamewar of some sort with somebody. Some very-not-nice things were said, and apparently some personal information was posted. (Ostensibly the person's real name could be found just by typing his username into google, but I haven't confirmed that).
Unfortunately for MakingLights, the person who was flamed turned out to be a Wikipedia administrator. He came to Wikipedia, declared Making Lights an "attack site", and in less than two hours, he went to 23 different pages and deleted all the links to Making Lights and its affiliated sites.
Hmmm, I was "Ron Ritzman" on Usenet. I'm "Ron Ritzman" here. and I'm "Ron Ritzman" in real life. I, like 99.9% of people posting to newsgroups, have been flamed. Can I now declare "Google Groups" an "Attack Site" and delete all references to it anywhere I find them in WP?
Alec Conroy wrote:
By and large, it seems like the BADSITES-equivalent proposals are "mostly dead"-- I think everyone recognizes that "Never link to any 'site that is sufficently bad', deletion exempt from 3RR" has been rejected by the community. (Rejected in the formal sense-- it's hotly disputed, doesn't have consensus, and that isn't likely to change anytime soon).
Such proposals may be mostly dead, but of course: "MOSTLY dead" isn't "all dead". I see there's at least one BADSITES-equivalent proposal still floating around here on the list, namely the proposal that says "Any site that is sufficiently bad shall be declared unreliable, and may not be linked to". And, like any perinneal debate, I'm sure there will be more such proposals for the foreseeable future.
Did you really intend "perineal" instead of "perennial"? I suppose that a pain in the perineum is close enough to a pain in the butt. :-)
Ordinarily, I'd use a hypothetical example here, but I've found that in this debate, hypothetical examples are invariably dismissed when someone says "Oh, that could never really happen". So I actually do have to use a real-world example if we're going to talk about this.
Real-world examples allow a discussion to be personalised. It's much easier to "understand" the problem in a narrow context. Looking at that situation in a larger context requires that people review their own assumptions. That's rarely easy.
The whole experience was extremely upsetting for all involved, and if you look around on Sci-Fi community blogs, you can see that Wikipedia lost a lot of respect in that incident. Many in that sci-fi-blogger subculture seem to have some harsh words for Wikipedia as a result of the experience, and I'm sure we alienated a lot of people who could have been valuable contributors. The people who edit and read Making Lights felt bullied, abused, and harassed.
The harsh words and loss of respect were for Wikipedia in general, and not just the misguided individual. Outsiders cannot be expected to be knowledgeable about Wikipedia's internal politics, or that such antics are the preserve of a minority of Wikipedians.
Speaking as a reader/editors of Making Light, Sci Fi megagenius Cory Doctorow summarized the experience thusly:
"This is unseemly. You appear to be attempting to punish someone who dislikes you by removing references to her site. This seems like retaliation, not an effort to improve Wikipedia. What's more, the repeated demand to change something posted to her site seems like extortion, not an attempt to improve Wikipedia. TNH claims that Wikipedians pursue petty vendettas at the expense of quality. Please conduct yourself in a way that does not lend itself to this interpretation of the project."
Such people will be more forgiving of an honest error. Normal behaviour would suggest that an erroneous comment, even one that is prima facie libellous, can be easily removed when it is brought to our attention, and misunderstandings can be forgiven without further ado. When either the "victim" or the community overreacts it becomes a much bigger problem.
Ultimatlely, that particular incident came to an end when the disputed material was deleted from ML, at least temporarily, and the links to ML were restored.
So blackmail worked?
Now, let's not obsess over WHO did this. I swear, I'm not bring this up to get in a dig at anyone. The admin in question admits at least having "overreacted", and as long as the behavior has stopped, it doesn't matter WHO did this-- so by bringing this up, I'm sincerely, sincerely not trying to pick on anyone. We've all done things in the past, on wikipedia or elsewhere, that we shouldn't be throwing stones over this past thing right now.
There are some people who are unable to abstract general principles in the absence of a concrete incident. The problem there is that generalisation from a particular circumstance with particular facts distorts the general concept, and forces us into unduly circumscribed modes of thought. Examples are fine, but they are just that, and should never be a part of a general rule.
But that said, I can't help but notice that this sort of abuse seems inherent to any BADSITESesque polices of the form "no linking to sites that are sufficiently bad".
Sure, it's the misguided idea that the world's problems can be solved through punitive measures.
I believe any future policy, in order to be successful, must recognize the past abuses of BADSITES, and must include reasonsable assurances that the proposed policy won't lead to the same kind of abuses in the future.
The experience has had to be lived, and it is hard to avoid going through the same mistakes when you haven't had the experience in the first place. :-(
Ec
Alec Conroy wrote:
How would your policy prevent incidents like MakingLights and the MichaelMoore from happening again in the future?
It's a good idea to check any proposals against real-world incidents. But you should enlarge your list to cover more severe cases of harassment. The MichaelMoore issue barely even counts.
DISCLAIMER:
Just to remind us all, I'll recap the Making Lights saga, but I won't name the person who was involved, and I sincerely would ask everyone else not to criticize someone today for something they did months ago. Seriously. We've all made mistakes, they're over and done with, and I _sincerely_ am not trying to relive this past saga-- I just don't want to relive it in the future either.
Ordinarily, I'd use a hypothetical example here, but I've found that in this debate, hypothetical examples are invariably dismissed when someone says "Oh, that could never really happen". So I actually do have to use a real-world example if we're going to talk about this.
You protest too much. An example with more severe harassment would perhaps be more useful. Also, if you don't include the whole story then it doesn't make a good example.
Not coincidentally, you've picked a story that involves me. The fact that I'm an administrator has nothing to do with what happened, except that administrators are more likely to be the subject of harassment arising out of the actions they take on-Wiki. In this instance, working to maintain Wikipedia policies made me the target of a blogger prominent in the SciFi community. The blogger repeatedly asked me to stop interfering with her efforts to smear her opponents and to add positive material to the articles about herself, her husband, and their projects. When I persisted she turned to off-Wiki harassment, using her blog to first criticize using crude personal remarks, then to reveal private information. She found the information by digging through material deleted from Encyclopedia Dramatica - material ED had been conscientious enough to remove.
When I discovered the personal information I checked current WP policy and it said that links to attack sites may be removed without limit. I interpreted the combination of personal attacks and outing to be sufficient to categorize the blog as an attack site. I was probably wrong, based on the responses. I was also wrong in acting on my own as opposed to bringing it the community or at least an uninvolved editor. And it would have been far better to contact the blogger first to seek a diplomatic resolution, a resolution which was ultimately accomplished soon after.
The points I think we can take away from this is that we need a policy with clear definitions and clear procedures so that someone in my position knows how to proceed. It should include a procedure for having a 3rd party or group investigate the problem.
My questions for Will Beback, or anyone else in the future who proposes a new policy that forbids all links to "sites that contain attacks" are this:
#1. Do you agree that the Making Light case was an abuse of power (or at least, incorrect. .-- i.e. Do you agree Making lights should NOT have been purged)?
The blogger abused her power to harass Wikipedia editors. Should her self-published website have been removed as a result, or should she have been "rewarded" by adding more links to it?
#2. And if so, how will your new proposed policy prevent this sort of abuse when the old policy was unable to. That is-- if we all magically decided to enact your policy today, what's to stop you (or me, or anyone) from turning around tomorrow and having a complete repeat of this whole fiasco tomorrow.
Let me ask you - will your proposal prevent bloggers who edit Wikipedia from using their blogs to settle on-Wiki disputes?
-Will
On 18/10/2007, Will Beback will.beback.1@gmail.com wrote:
Alec Conroy wrote:
How would your policy prevent incidents like MakingLights and the MichaelMoore from happening again in the future?
It's a good idea to check any proposals against real-world incidents. But you should enlarge your list to cover more severe cases of harassment. The MichaelMoore issue barely even counts.
I believe that is, er, his point. These proposals will inevitably be expanded to cover the edge cases; with the unambiguous ones, people really aren't going to complain if it gets done even with no policy.
DISCLAIMER:
Just to remind us all, I'll recap the Making Lights saga, but I won't name the person who was involved, and I sincerely would ask everyone else not to criticize someone today for something they did months ago. Seriously. We've all made mistakes, they're over and done with, and I _sincerely_ am not trying to relive this past saga-- I just don't want to relive it in the future either.
Ordinarily, I'd use a hypothetical example here, but I've found that in this debate, hypothetical examples are invariably dismissed when someone says "Oh, that could never really happen". So I actually do have to use a real-world example if we're going to talk about this.
You protest too much. An example with more severe harassment would perhaps be more useful. Also, if you don't include the whole story then it doesn't make a good example.
Not coincidentally, you've picked a story that involves me. The fact that I'm an administrator has nothing to do with what happened, except that administrators are more likely to be the subject of harassment arising out of the actions they take on-Wiki. In this instance, working to maintain Wikipedia policies made me the target of a blogger prominent in the SciFi community.
...you became a "target" of TNH. Uh-huh. My understanding is that the two of you pissed each other off thoroughly, and she considers herself just as "harrassed" by you.
It is, I think, appropriate for me to add the other side's description here:
----
I think a more accurate description would be that I did something which displeased Will BeBack, and that his immediate response was not peaceable. I'm not keen to go on the warpath, but I've never responded well to being told "Hello, you're Belgium."
I would never have taken the slightest interest in Will BeBack if he hadn't been harassing me and Patrick on Wikipedia. When I looked into having that problem arbitrated, I discovered that WB's a high-ranking Wikipedian, so I concluded it was useless for me to protest his harassment. I also concluded that it was useless for me to try to have any substantial participation in the Wikipedia project.
I remained mildly curious about the identity of Will BeBack. A little while after I made the original post that started this thread, I casually googled on his pseudonym. It didn't take a lot of looking for me to find an old mention of his real name via Google cache. It had been discussed in Encyclopedia Dramatica: an irresponsible site, but the information itself sounded real enough. I linked to that page. Later in the thread I mentioned that the site had gone down, and a couple of commenters supplied the name.
That's all.
----
http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/008953.html#189979
I cannot say I particularly trust your interpretation over hers.
My questions for Will Beback, or anyone else in the future who proposes a new policy that forbids all links to "sites that contain attacks" are this:
#1. Do you agree that the Making Light case was an abuse of power (or at least, incorrect. .-- i.e. Do you agree Making lights should NOT have been purged)?
The blogger abused her power to harass Wikipedia editors.
No, the blogger made an entirely understandable vent, in reply to some comments - as she had been many times previously - about the bureaucratic insanity of Wikipedia. She mentioned one admin who had particularly irritated her by name (and not entirely without merit, as far as I can see); later that day, she idly googled the name, discovered ED mentioned that editor, and posted the link in a later comment, as a footnote. (The rest of the commenters fairly quickly pointed out that ED was nutbar, incidentally)
This was *in a personal blog*. The comment was not being forced upon Wikipedia editors, advertised to Wikipedia readers, or even positioned in such a way as to be easily visible to anyone following a link from Wikipedia; it was one person engaged in a free and frank discussion in the comment thread of one post on their personal blog. It was not even directed at the Wikipedia community, save that very small portion of it (me and Arwel Parry, I think, the only ones I can name) who overlap with TNH's regular audience.
I think "harassing" is a rather wide assumption here - are we so self-centred that we believe everyone who writes about us does so with us as the intended audience? Do *you* believe she was directing it at you personally, rather than as a footnote to her disgust with our project? "Harassment". Christ. If this sort of unconnected writing is "harassment", I harassed the Prime Minister three times this afternoon.
Should her self-published website have been removed as a result, or should she have been "rewarded" by adding more links to it?
Ah, yes, an entirely irrelevant nonsequitur.
On 10/18/07, Will Beback will.beback.1@gmail.com wrote:
The blogger abused her power to harass Wikipedia editors. Should her self-published website have been removed as a result, or should she have been "rewarded" by adding more links to it?
I was trying really hard to avoid these threads because I find the whole thing absurd; however, I suddenly feel the need to point out how absurd it actually is... (and my following comments are not directed at anyone in particular.)
The answer to the quoted question is "Neither" -- and that's what most people seem to be missing in this whole "attack sites" debate. It doesn't have to be one or the other!
If the links to her self-published website were already in place on the article(s), logic dictates that there must have been a valid editorial purpose for the links, or they would already have been removed. So, if that site was already seen as a reliable source (or at least a valid external link), it didn't suddenly cease to be reliable because content you object to was placed on other pages on the same site. Hence, no reason for removal - unless the content of the *linked pages themselves* changed to be inappropriate, editorially, for the articles they were linked from. But if that were the case, then they would need to be removed anyway under sound editorial judgment, regardless of any possible "harassment policy".
By the same token, content that wasn't already linked didn't suddenly become more appealing to include as a source or EL as a result of the alleged abuse. Hence, no reason for additional links.
I fail to understand why there is such a brouhaha over all this attack sites crap, when it's already well covered under existing guidelines -- link to a source if it contains useful information, don't link to it if it doesn't. The only *possible* confusion is if it has valid, useful information on the top of the page and "Wikipedia editor X is a fuckwit" at the bottom, which is hardly likely.
Even for things like the whole michaelmoore.com situation, where the front page of the site, which is what was linked, changes to be unfriendly to a Wikipedian; it's not like removing the link does anything except convey a childish "nyah-nyah, we unlinked you" sentiment -- anybody with two brain cells to rub together can use Google to figure out that [[Michael Moore]] has a website at michaelmoore.com, whether or not we link to it. And if you don't have two brain cells to rub together, you can have a guide from ChaCha.com find it for you.
The whole debate conveys a sense of ... well, it's like the maturity level displayed by the average mid-adolescent LiveJournaler... "You said I'm fat, I'm un-friending you!" which means *nothing* to anyone, except the person who made the fat comment and the person who was insulted. And then there are the people trying to push a more reasonable position on this and getting told that they must be in favor of harassing their fellow LiveJour... err, Wikipedians. Good lord, people, grow up.
In the rare case that there's more severe harassment that passes the level of "You're fat/stupid/ugly/draconian/right-wing/left-wing/Republican/Democrat/fascist/etc." and reaches actual threats of harm to another person, then that's well-covered by the Terms of Use of almost all US-based Internet providers -- report them to the ISP! I guarantee you the material will be removed or the whole site shut down in short order, which will rectify the linking dilemma anyway. Or, report them to law enforcement. It will also be handled in short order.
#2. And if so, how will your new proposed policy prevent this sort of abuse when the old policy was unable to. That is-- if we all magically decided to enact your policy today, what's to stop you (or me, or anyone) from turning around tomorrow and having a complete repeat of this whole fiasco tomorrow.
Let me ask you - will your proposal prevent bloggers who edit Wikipedia from using their blogs to settle on-Wiki disputes?
Nothing will ever prevent that. Don't waste the effort trying to formulate something aimed at stopping such.
--Darkwind
Quoting RLS evendell@gmail.com:
On 10/18/07, Will Beback will.beback.1@gmail.com wrote:
The blogger abused her power to harass Wikipedia editors. Should her self-published website have been removed as a result, or should she have been "rewarded" by adding more links to it?
I was trying really hard to avoid these threads because I find the whole thing absurd; however, I suddenly feel the need to point out how absurd it actually is... (and my following comments are not directed at anyone in particular.)
The answer to the quoted question is "Neither" -- and that's what most people seem to be missing in this whole "attack sites" debate. It doesn't have to be one or the other!
If the links to her self-published website were already in place on the article(s), logic dictates that there must have been a valid editorial purpose for the links, or they would already have been removed. So, if that site was already seen as a reliable source (or at least a valid external link), it didn't suddenly cease to be reliable because content you object to was placed on other pages on the same site. Hence, no reason for removal - unless the content of the *linked pages themselves* changed to be inappropriate, editorially, for the articles they were linked from. But if that were the case, then they would need to be removed anyway under sound editorial judgment, regardless of any possible "harassment policy".
By the same token, content that wasn't already linked didn't suddenly become more appealing to include as a source or EL as a result of the alleged abuse. Hence, no reason for additional links.
I fail to understand why there is such a brouhaha over all this attack sites crap, when it's already well covered under existing guidelines -- link to a source if it contains useful information, don't link to it if it doesn't. The only *possible* confusion is if it has valid, useful information on the top of the page and "Wikipedia editor X is a fuckwit" at the bottom, which is hardly likely.
Even for things like the whole michaelmoore.com situation, where the front page of the site, which is what was linked, changes to be unfriendly to a Wikipedian; it's not like removing the link does anything except convey a childish "nyah-nyah, we unlinked you" sentiment -- anybody with two brain cells to rub together can use Google to figure out that [[Michael Moore]] has a website at michaelmoore.com, whether or not we link to it. And if you don't have two brain cells to rub together, you can have a guide from ChaCha.com find it for you.
The whole debate conveys a sense of ... well, it's like the maturity level displayed by the average mid-adolescent LiveJournaler... "You said I'm fat, I'm un-friending you!" which means *nothing* to anyone, except the person who made the fat comment and the person who was insulted. And then there are the people trying to push a more reasonable position on this and getting told that they must be in favor of harassing their fellow LiveJour... err, Wikipedians. Good lord, people, grow up.
In the rare case that there's more severe harassment that passes the level of "You're fat/stupid/ugly/draconian/right-wing/left-wing/Republican/Democrat/fascist/etc." and reaches actual threats of harm to another person, then that's well-covered by the Terms of Use of almost all US-based Internet providers -- report them to the ISP! I guarantee you the material will be removed or the whole site shut down in short order, which will rectify the linking dilemma anyway. Or, report them to law enforcement. It will also be handled in short order.
#2. And if so, how will your new proposed policy prevent this sort of abuse when the old policy was unable to. That is-- if we all magically decided to enact your policy today, what's to stop you (or me, or anyone) from turning around tomorrow and having a complete repeat of this whole fiasco tomorrow.
Let me ask you - will your proposal prevent bloggers who edit Wikipedia from using their blogs to settle on-Wiki disputes?
Nothing will ever prevent that. Don't waste the effort trying to formulate something aimed at stopping such.
--Darkwind
Darkwind,
Very well said. That's close to what I've been trying to say but you said it much more eloquently.
On 10/18/07, RLS evendell@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/18/07, Will Beback will.beback.1@gmail.com wrote:
The blogger abused her power to harass Wikipedia editors. Should her self-published website have been removed as a result, or should she have been "rewarded" by adding more links to it?
I was trying really hard to avoid these threads because I find the whole thing absurd; however, I suddenly feel the need to point out how absurd it actually is... (and my following comments are not directed at anyone in particular.)
The answer to the quoted question is "Neither" -- and that's what most people seem to be missing in this whole "attack sites" debate. It doesn't have to be one or the other!
If the links to her self-published website were already in place on the article(s), logic dictates that there must have been a valid editorial purpose for the links, or they would already have been removed. So, if that site was already seen as a reliable source (or at least a valid external link), it didn't suddenly cease to be reliable because content you object to was placed on other pages on the same site. Hence, no reason for removal - unless the content of the *linked pages themselves* changed to be inappropriate, editorially, for the articles they were linked from. But if that were the case, then they would need to be removed anyway under sound editorial judgment, regardless of any possible "harassment policy".
By the same token, content that wasn't already linked didn't suddenly become more appealing to include as a source or EL as a result of the alleged abuse. Hence, no reason for additional links.
I fail to understand why there is such a brouhaha over all this attack sites crap, when it's already well covered under existing guidelines -- link to a source if it contains useful information, don't link to it if it doesn't. The only *possible* confusion is if it has valid, useful information on the top of the page and "Wikipedia editor X is a fuckwit" at the bottom, which is hardly likely.
I and some others (Steve Summit most notably, I believe) have pointed this out before. We've been ignored resoundingly.
Johnleemk
Quoting Will Beback will.beback.1@gmail.com:
#1. Do you agree that the Making Light case was an abuse of power (or at least, incorrect. .-- i.e. Do you agree Making lights should NOT have been purged)?
The blogger abused her power to harass Wikipedia editors. Should her self-published website have been removed as a result, or should she have been "rewarded" by adding more links to it?
Um what? No one is advocating we reward such people with additional links or baked cookies. The question is whether to remove links that would be there otherwise.
#2. And if so, how will your new proposed policy prevent this sort of abuse when the old policy was unable to. That is-- if we all magically decided to enact your policy today, what's to stop you (or me, or anyone) from turning around tomorrow and having a complete repeat of this whole fiasco tomorrow.
Let me ask you - will your proposal prevent bloggers who edit Wikipedia from using their blogs to settle on-Wiki disputes?
Oh to be sure Alec's proposal does not do that. But as we have tried to explain, yours geneally won't either. People will still use their blogs to whine or attack Wikipedia editors. Furthermore, the vast majority of blogs aren't notable enough to get linked to anyways.
Will Beback wrote:
The blogger abused her power to harass Wikipedia editors. Should her self-published website have been removed as a result, or should she have been "rewarded" by adding more links to it?
Will, how can you possibly claim that adding links is a reward, but removing links is not a punishment and would not be seen as one?
Honestly, between the apparent conflicts in your assorted answers, your unwillingness to answer David's question about what you learned from last time, and your apparent inability to even understand the points on the other side, I have to wonder about your motivation here.
Given that nobody else seems to think your a proposal is a good idea, ave you considered the notion that perhaps you're still sore about the previous incident and are determined to prove yourself right retrospectively?
William
William Pietri wrote:
Will Beback wrote:
The blogger abused her power to harass Wikipedia editors. Should her self-published website have been removed as a result, or should she have been "rewarded" by adding more links to it?
Will, how can you possibly claim that adding links is a reward, but removing links is not a punishment and would not be seen as one?
I'm not claiming that linking is a reward, which I tried to convey by the quotation marks.
Honestly, between the apparent conflicts in your assorted answers, your unwillingness to answer David's question about what you learned from last time, and your apparent inability to even understand the points on the other side, I have to wonder about your motivation here.
Given that nobody else seems to think your a proposal is a good idea, ave you considered the notion that perhaps you're still sore about the previous incident and are determined to prove yourself right retrospectively?
William
Is that what passes of assuming good faith around here? I was never involved in any of the previous discussions about an off-site harassment policy, and only became involved in this one when a poor summary of the TNH was added by Alecmconroy to the ArbCom case. I made corrections to the record and became engaged in the ArbCom case talk pages. From there I became involved in the discussion over drafting a new policy and deleting the old one, which I was concerned was dominated by a sock puppet and an editor with little WP involvement. While they should have a say too, I don't think we want to have our policies re-written by folks with little discernable investment in the project. To move things forward I made a fresh proposal that I though addressed some objections to previous policies. However the loud response has been "that sounds like the old proposal, and we've already rejected that so stop bothering us." I've seen too few suggestions and too much potshots. It's easy to say "that'll never work", and apparently hard to ask "how about this?"
-W.
Will Beback wrote:
Honestly, between the apparent conflicts in your assorted answers, your unwillingness to answer David's question about what you learned from last time, and your apparent inability to even understand the points on the other side, I have to wonder about your motivation here.
Given that nobody else seems to think your a proposal is a good idea, ave you considered the notion that perhaps you're still sore about the previous incident and are determined to prove yourself right retrospectively?
Is that what passes of assuming good faith around here?
I'm not questioning your good faith at all, Will. I'm questioning you ability to be open and honest about your feelings and motivations, primarily with yourself. I guess I'm also questioning your ability to recognize when you have a conflict of interest and set that aside.
Based on what I know of the Making Light incident, those seemed to be important factors. When a discussion, like this one, is making no progress, one possible reason is that it's not actually about the topic being discussed. So I thought I'd ask. I guess I got about the answer I expected, though.
To move things forward I made a fresh proposal that I though addressed some objections to previous policies. However the loud response has been "that sounds like the old proposal, and we've already rejected that so stop bothering us." I've seen too few suggestions and too much potshots. It's easy to say "that'll never work", and apparently hard to ask "how about this?"
I understand your proposal is different than BADSITES Classic. I think we've explained in detail why we think this particular proposal would produce at best small benefit while creating lasting harm both externally and internally. I believe you have not acknowledged or recognized those issues, or adjusted your proposal in response to them, so I feel the discussion is approaching, if not already past, the end of its useful life. Perhaps that's where you're getting the "stop bothering us" feeling from.
As to "it's easy to take pot shots" bit, I've proposed two or three different things, so I assume you're talking about somebody else here.
William